Thanks for the help. I got my script working to download my pictures from my Kodak DC290 using gphoto command line arguments. The scripts checks to see if
~/camera/images/yyyy-mm-dd exists. It it does not the directory is created. After the directory is found to exist or is created the image download to it.

One note: to get the 4 digit year use %Y instead of %y which returns a w digit year.